


In the Beginning

by Kizmet



Series: Tear Me Down [5]
Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, F/M, Past Lives, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 15:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4966885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kizmet/pseuds/Kizmet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you trace it back to the very beginning it all started when the angel who would become Satan first set eyes on the woman who would be reincarnated as Yuri Egin.  Because, before he fell from grace, he fell in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Parental Concerns

**Author's Note:**

> “There are three things I’ve learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin.” - Linus, “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown”.
> 
> Well, obviously that first one’s shot out of the water. Still, we post warnings for slash, character death and assorted other things so I thought I’d post a warning for this: This segment includes a character known as ‘God’, who is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. In short, not the Christian notion of God. Howver his power is so far beyond the rest of the characters that he has been mistaken for both. 
> 
> This is for a couple of reasons: First I’m just not that interested in writing about a conflict between ultimate good and ultimate evil. Second the main pairing in this segment is Yuri/Satan and the whole idea of Satan/ANYONE is just weird but if ‘God’ isn’t God, then ‘Satan’ doesn’t have to be the biblical Satan. In the anime it didn’t seem that Yuri was coerced or tricked into her liaison and I have no intention of making her an ignorant victim.

Several minutes before his alarm clock would have gone off, Yukio Okumura sat up and switched off the alarm. He took a small gun out from under his pillow and slid it into his ankle holster. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bed and walked across the small bedroom to kneel beside a small toddler bed on the opposite wall, festooned with a brightly colored alphabet bedspread. “Kit, it’s morning,” Yukio said softly giving the little fox-boy’s shoulder a gentle shake. He swallowed and pasted on a smile, “Your first day of Preschool.”

Kit’s tail twitched. Groggily he reached up and rubbed at his eyes with a small fist. Then he sat up and stretched, wrapping his arms around Yukio’s neck, “‘Morning Daddy!” he chirped.

Yukio returned the hug with a faint flush suffusing his cheeks. Teaching Kit to call him ‘daddy’ had been Shura’s notion of a joke, Yukio wondered if it had ever occurred to her that it wasn’t something that could ever be taken back. 

“Time to get up,” Yukio said as he lifted Kit out of bed and carried him across the hall to the small bathroom. He used his foot to pull a small step out from under the sink and stood Kit on it. The little boy stretched to pick his toothbrush out of the cup on the sink then held it up for toothpaste. Once Kit was set Yukio got out his own toothbrush. When he started brushing Kit watched their reflections in the mirror and carefully mimicked every move Yukio made. “Good job,” Yukio told Kit as he reclaimed the toothbrush and rinsed it. Kit smiled toothily. 

Yukio helped Kit out of his pajamas and shooed him toward the shower. He hung his holster on the towel rack, stripped out of his own sleep-clothes and stepped under the lukewarm spray as well. While Yukio worked soap into Kit’s hair and the silky fur of his tail, Kit claimed the shampoo bottle and used it to blow bubbles.

“Breakfast’s on!” Shura called loudly just as Yukio finished rinsing Kit off. Kit darted out of the shower and made a bee-line for the kitchen, naked and dripping. “I hate her, I really hate her,” Yukio muttered as he made a futile grab for the escaping child. Kit threw the door open and raced down the short hall to straight to the kitchen. Shura grinned down the length of the hall as Yukio slammed the door shut. “It’s your hardwood floor that’s getting wet!” Yukio shouted through the once again closed door. 

“Worth the view,” Shura called back. “I never knew a person could turn that red before you moved in.”

“I hate you,” Yukio repeated. But he opened the door a crack and tossed out a towel. “Overalls,” he instructed. “I don’t want any chance of Kit’s tail being seen.”

Shura rolled her eyes. “We checked the staff, none of them have a masho. Kit could strip bare and no one would notice a thing.”

“One of the other parents could have a masho,” Yukio pointed out.

“You’re going to have an ulcer before you turn twenty,” Shura informed him but she helped Kit into the overalls after drying him off. Then she grinned at Kit, “Peanut Butter and Jelly or pop tarts?” she asked.

“Healthy food!” Yukio shouted even though he couldn’t have heard Shura’s comments over the running water.

“Jelly,” Kit declared. Shura snickered and fixed him his Peanut Butter and jelly sandwich. Yukio emerged from the bathroom in time to see Kit reaching eagerly for the sticky, dripping sandwich. He sighed and grabbed a paper towel, getting there just in time to intercept the first glob of jelly as it squished out from between the bread.

After breakfast Yukio shrugged into his regular holster, it held two pistols near the small of his back and was practically unnoticeable under the light school blazer he now wore in the place of his Exorcist Jacket. Like all the survivors of the Facility, Yukio had been put on extended medical leave. When the leave ended he had requested a sabbatical to concentrate on his school for a few years. While it was Kit’s first day of preschool, it was the first day of Yukio’s junior year of high school due to the shift in schedule between Brazil and Japan and his decision to jump ahead rather than be held back. Without his Exorcist duties to worry about Yukio had signed up for a number of college classes and planned on having a good start on his sophomore year of college by the time he graduated high school. 

Yukio checked his book-bag. He had his notebooks, texts, half a dozen clips of a variety of ammo, calculator, pencils and a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary. Then he packed Kit’s lunch and the stuffed rabbit Kit liked to sleep with in a second, smaller bag. “Ready to go?” Yukio called. Kit nodded and hopped off his chair, leaving Shura to finish the rest of her pop tart without help. Yukio crouched down and looped a medical alert necklace with a sturdy chain around Kit’s neck. “If you have any problems at school, if anything scares you, just poke the button and I’ll come,” Yukio promised. He demonstrated the poking the panic button on the necklace and showed Kit his phone as the emergency page popped up on the screen.

Kit patted Yukio on the shoulder, “I’ll be okay Daddy,” he assured Yukio. 

Yukio tucked the necklace under Kit’s shirt then carefully lowered a bucket hat over Kit’s fox ears, securing it under his chin. “I talked to the teachers at your school so they all know that it’s okay if you wear your hat indoors and that I’ll be very unhappy with anyone who tries to make you take it off.” 

“Have fun, make some friends,” Shura called as they left.

“I’m sure Kit’ll be fine,” Yukio said sounding anything but sure.

“I wasn’t talking to Kit,” Shura replied. “Him, I’m not worried about.”

Yukio considered flipping her off, but decided not in front of a three year old. Instead he shut the door, very firmly. 

Yukio and Kit waited at the bus stop outside of Shura’s apartment. When the bus arrived Yukio picked Kit up and carried him up the tall steps then settled Kit in a window seat. There had been three preschools that were closer to the Academy or Shura’s apartment but two of them had a staff member with a masho and the third had someone who reminded Yukio too much of a teacher who’d always hated Rin when they’d been children. 

The commuter across the aisle opened up a newspaper. The headline screamed “Investigators still searching for cause of Olympic Torch Tragedy.” Below, in smaller print, it continued, “Games canceled. Thousands dead. True Cross officials called in.”

Yukio snorted, two weeks and the general public was just starting to suspect that the massive explosion when the Olympic cauldron was lit had been caused by demonic activity. The True Cross had known that Iblis had been behind the disaster since the second day. Still he had to admit it had been barely a month since Shiemi and Gaia had made the existence of demons common knowledge. Yukio wondered if the Grigori would send Rin after the belligerent Hell King now that their Paladin’s defense of him had made it politically unviable to execute Rin outright or even to threaten him with execution.

Several loud young men got on the bus. Yukio watched them warily, his hand drifting toward the grip of his gun, but nothing happend. A few minutes later Yukio and Kit reached their stop. 

Yukio swung Kit up on one hip and quickly left the bus. Once the bus had driven away Yukio set Kit back on his feet and offered him a hand. Hand in hand they walked several blocks to the preschool. Outside of the gate Yukio knelt down in front of Kit and checked that his hat was secure. “I’ll pick you up right after my classes let out,” Yukio promised. “You’ll have fun with the other children. Don’t fight, if anyone is mean to you- Or if your teacher try to make you take off your hat, or if anyone tries to take you away, just push the panic button like I showed you and I’ll come right away.”

Kit hugged Yukio, “I’ll be okay, Daddy.”

Yukio smiled wanly. “Let’s go see your class,” he said and they went in. The walls of the preschool were painted in bright, primary colors. The alphabet and numbers mingled with an assortment of friendly looking animals. It wasn’t cheap, but Egin had made Yukio his sole heir, his will hadn’t acknowledging either Rin or Rene as his grandsons. Yukio liked the idea of spending his grandfather’s money the part-demon children who had been one of the many victims of Egin’s Facility.

“Mr. Okumura, Kit, we’re glad to see you,” the director said coming out of her office to greet them. “Let me show you to Kit’s classroom.” Yukio and Shura had toured the facility several times and brought Kit to visit before settling on the preschool, but the director still pointed out the various rooms as they walked down the hall. There was a poster on the three to five year-old preschool room that proclaimed “Welcome Kit!” Yukio crouched down with his arm around Kit’s shoulders and read a few of the messages from Kit’s new teachers to him before opening the door.

“You came back!” one of the other children exclaimed upon seeing Kit. The little girl, nearly five years old and almost ready to ‘graduate’ to kindergarten rushed over to see to her self-appointed duties of classroom representative. She took Kit’s hand and led him off to introduce to the other children. 

Kit waved to Yukio and allowed himself to be drawn off.

“He’ll be fine,” the teacher said kindly as she noted Yukio’s worried expression. 

“I know it’s bad manners to wear hats indoors,” Yukio said, “But please make sure everyone knows it’s one of the few things he has of his parents. I don’t want anyone trying to make him take it off.”

“We understand,” the teacher replied. 

“Kit,” Yukio called. “I’ll be back by three to pick you up.” Yukio was registered for the first school session of the day, but had managed to arrange a few extra hours of classes during the second session to continue improving his Portuguese and start taking some of the more general Freshman college courses. He could barely remember a time when he hadn’t been balancing the demands of studying to be an Exorcist and then, once he’d graduated, his commitments as member of the True Cross against his normal class load. With Brazil’s shorter school day on top of Yukio’s sudden lack of a double life he hadn’t known what else to do with himself even when he considered that he’d become a parent when he stopped being an Exorcist.

Kit smiled and waved. Yukio hesitated a moment longer then took his leave. 

During the whole bus trip back across town to the True Cross Academy, Yukio couldn’t stop worrying about Kit. The little boy had hardly been out of his sight for more than a few minutes since he’d found Yukio after the Facility had been destroyed. After Yukio had cremated his cousin, Rene’s body. After Yukio had sent Egin to Hell, undecided as to who was more evil: his father or his maternal grandfather, but convinced that they deserved each other. At least five times before the bus reached his stop, Yukio checked the gps locator on Kit’s alert necklace to make sure he was still at the preschool and hadn’t been kidnapped or run away or.... Yukio wasn’t sure of all the possibilities but it was good to be able to glance at his phone and know Kit was safe where he was supposed to be.

When he reached the school, Yukio had to run to make his first class on time. He slipped into one of the seats at the back of the room just as the bell rang. Shortly after the instructor started in on her introductory speech for the new year it occurred to Yukio that someone could have taken Kit’s necklace off and left it at the preschool and he’d never know.

Yukio pulled up the gps monitor and zoomed in on the location. After several minutes of staring at the device he was reassured to see small movements. Fifteen minutes after that Yukio thought of the possibility that someone had put the necklace on another child. Of course he hadn’t mentioned the panic button to anyone apart from Shura and even she didn’t know about the gps, but still….

* * *

Shura shoved open the door to the emergency room and deftly wove through the crowd inside to reach the front desk. “Shura Kirigakure, you called me for Yukio Okumura,” she said.

“Nurse’s station, through the doors and to the left,” the receptionist told her. “Talk to the on duty nurse.”

Shura nodded and hurried on. At the Nurse’s station she repeated herself, “I’m Shura Kirigakure, what happened to Yukio? Yukio Okumura.”

The nurse paused for a moment to check one of her charts. “Mr. Okumura had a panic attack in class this morning,” the nurse said. “We tried to provide help to control his breathing but our intervention only seemed to trigger further panics. At that point we called you, as his listed next of kin. He’s in room 2D, we’re monitoring him but otherwise keeping our distance to avoid worsening the situation. 

Shura nodded and hurried to the indicated room. Yukio was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed a paper bag beside him. He had his elbows leaned on his knees and his head hanging as he tried to force himself to breath slowly and evenly. 

“What happened?” Shura asked.

“Kit,” Yukio managed in a breathless gasp.

Shura immediately grabbed her cellphone and hit the speed-dial number for Kit’s preschool. She spoke to the person on the other end of the line for a few minutes. “Kit’s fine,” she told Yukio. “Should I have the director get him so you can hear for yourself?”

Yukio shook his head. “I’m pathetic,” he said once Shura had hung up. “In the middle of my first class I just started thinking that something might have happened to Kit. What if someone saw his ears or tail and called the True Cross? What if he got in a fight and hurt someone and they took him away and gave him to some other place like the Facility? What if the True Cross had been watching him all along, just waiting for me to let him out of my sight? What if it was all a trap? What if? What if? What if? The next thing I knew I was gasping for air and I just couldn’t stop.”

Shura winced. “I guess we could head over to his preschool and pick him up.” Yukio looked up eagerly. “But I really don’t think you should. Why don’t we go down to the batting cages, that should keep you distracted for a few hours. If you make it through the whole day tomorrow will be be.” 

“Maybe we should just stop by and check on Kit first.,” Yukio suggested.

“I’ll send one of my snakes,” Shura bartered.

Somehow Yukio made it through Kit’s first day of preschool without breaking down and pulling him out. But after dinner that night Kit found himself treated to a glut of bedtime stories. Yukio read so many stories that the three year old eventually fell asleep in Yukio’s lap while he read. 

“I think he’s done,” Shura said when Yukio finished the story. 

“I’ll just sit here for a few minutes,” Yukio whispered. He set the book aside and leaned back in the corner of the couch. “Let him get a bit more soundly asleep before I put him in bed.” Yukio shifted Kit so that the little boy’s head rested in the crook of his neck.

Twenty minutes later when Shura got out of the shower she found Yukio fast asleep on the couch, Kit still wrapped in his arms. The little boy’s fox ears twitched every now and then, Yukio’s hand rested loosely on his back. Shura grabbed a blanket off Yukio’s bed and spread it over both of them. Then she went to bed.

* * *

The green neon of the microwave clock turned blood red as the hour struck midnight. A tiny swirling pit opened in the center of the kitchen table. A Coal Tar wriggled its way through the miniscule gate, then a second and the third until a whole flock of the smallest of demons swirled around the kitchen. Once the last Coal Tar had squeezed through the gate, it shut on itself. For a few moments the Coal Tars continued to swarm, then they spun together in an increasingly tight cyclone until the figure of Rene Egin stood in the center of the room blue flames burning brightly in the socket of his missing eye. 

The demon popped his neck and rolled his shoulders as if accustoming himself to his body then he looked around the room. When he spotted Yukio and Kit he walked over and leaned down to peer at Kit more closely.

Without even opening his eyes, Yukio drew his gun and pressed it into the demon’s stomach. “We had a deal,” Yukio stated coolly as he cautiously slid out from underneath Kit and set the sleeping child on the couch without his aim shifting an inch. “I gave you your father-in-law, you were to leave my cousin’s body alone.” 

Satan chuckled. “And the old bastard’s still screaming. I thought it only fitting that he get experience being burned alive after what he did to your mother,” For a moment Rene’s face twisted into an expression of deep hatred. Then Satan tsked and shook his head. “But that’s not the promise I remember making. Details matter Yukio. I promised to give Rene back to you in exchange for you giving me that miserable old goat. You, my boy, are hard to give gifts to. By the time I managed to round up his soul you’d already cremated him. This time your mother suggested I explain a bit before dumping him on your doorstep.”

Yukio frowned. “Outside,” he suggested, wanting more distance between Satan and Kit.

Satan grinned, “Don’t worry, I approve of the grandson you’ve brought me. The demon in him is strong. Not so much in your cousin. He may bear an uncanny resemblance to your twin, but he doesn’t, or I should say didn’t have enough demon-energy to fill a thimble. His soul never would have managed to reanimate his corpse on it’s own… So I’ve lent him some of my power. In return,” the devil tapped the cheek beneath Rene’s formerly empty eye-socket, “I get to keep an eye on you.” He frowned at Yukio. “You haven’t been doing so well. Your mother is worried about you.”

“Do not talk like you’re my parent,” Yukio hissed in a low, dangerous whisper. “You are directly responsible for the death of the only person I will ever acknowledge as my father.” 

“In every incarnation of your mother, our children are the most troublesome,” Satan complained. “Perhaps because I can never bring myself to discipline them properly.” Then he smiled, the warmth of it shocked Yukio to his core. “Still she is the one, the only one I want by side for all eternity.”


	2. Awakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Modesitt’s “Recluse Saga”, particularly the way that one era’s legends may not exactly reflect what actually happened. In my earlier stories when someone relays a legend they’ve heard, that’s how the story filtered into the collective memory… not necessarily exactly what happened. When one character tells another a story about their own past, what they say is no more trustworthy than they are. But flashbacks are what actually happened.

He opened his eyes and stared up at a featureless expanse of white. He heard others stirring, shifting of bodies on pallets, feathers sliding over one another. 

“Walk with me,” the Presence said. And so they did. They rolled off their pallets and stood. 

What was ahead and to the sides and below was as featureless as what had been above. ‘Walls, floor, ceiling,” the words appeared in his head. He thought for a moment and realized that there were many other words and concepts filling his mind. Understanding of many things filled him although he had never left this room before. 

He looked around at the others. They blended into the all encompassing whiteness as well, but unlike the walls they possessed a variety of textures. Their most notable features were the immense wings composed of soft down and glossy flight feathers, long primaries and dense coverts. Their bodies were bland next to their wings. Head, torso, legs, arms, fingers and toes all covered in a smooth, pliable white skin. Their features were well-formed but unnotable without contrasting colors. Even their eyes were white, a liquid sheen to them being all that distinguished them from the surrounding skin. All the others were exactly identical, nothing distinguished one from another and so he assumed that he must also look the same. 

A portal opened before them and they walked through it into a blank hall. Finally the hall opened up and far, far below they saw their first glimpse of color. Assiah was awash in color: Green meadows and trees, blue water rushing through sparkling streams, a scattering of low shelters that blended organically into the landscape. And between the shelters wandered humans. “They are precious to me,” the Presence informed them. “You will care for them.” 

Then the Presence led them out into the arching blue sky. As the Presence entered the world they saw it bend and shift around him, becoming less real, less solid where it interacted with the Presence. They spread their wings and leapt after the Presence. He decided he liked the feel of wind whistle through his feathers as he fell toward the earth. 

As they walked through the settlement the humans stopped whatever they were doing and turned to the Presence. “We give you thanks,” the humans said over and over again. The Presence waited at the center of the scattering of dwellings while the humans congregated and stared curiously at them.

“I can no long walk among you,” the Presence informed the gathered humans. 

The humans traded alarmed looks. “What have we done wrong?” “Why don’t you love us anymore?” “What will we do?”

“I have created these angels to watch over you,” the Presence said. “They will care for you and serve as intermediaries between us.” And so it was. 

There were many diverse tasks involved in caring for the humans but the angels instinctively knew what to do. They grew sustenance, prepared it and delivered it to the humans. The human bodies were less hardy than those of the angels and they lacked the wings that carried the angels back to Gehenna, where the Presence resided, so the angels brought bit of the Presence’s power back with them from its domain and when human bodies grew worn with the passing of time they used that power to restore them. Sometimes the humans wandered off and had to be guided back to their settlement. Humans found hundreds of ways to occupy their minds and most of their amusements ended up requiring some form of intervention from the angels to prevent them from harming themselves, because they were precious.

An age passed in that fashion. To the angel’s eyes the humans seemed to grow stronger, they needed less refreshing, their minds grew clearer and sharper… Which meant that they spent more of their time getting into trouble. 

The angel found himself wondering, occasionally, what it was that made humans so precious. It wasn’t his place but sometimes instead of focusing on his tasks he thought about why the humans were so remarkable. In his view humans served no purpose. They were incapable of caring for themselves. Even now that they were healthy and strong they spent easily a third of their time in a dormant state and a significant portion of the remainder refueling their bodies. And when humans weren’t engaged in maintaining their bodies they never knew what to do with themselves. Angels always knew, instinctively, what was needed of them. 

Once he brought up his thoughts to another angel. “They exist so that we have purpose,” the other angel stated. The first angel considered that. Taking care of something that only served the purpose of giving him something to care for seemed somehow… unsatisfying. He wondered if he were somehow defective that such thoughts entered his head. 

Over time he found himself watching one particular human more and more. She had long dark hair falling down her back in waves and large turquoise eyes that burned with purpose. To him the purpose in her eyes made her look more like an angel than a human. He found himself wondering what her purpose was. And as the time continued to pass he found himself deliberately seeking out duties that put him in her proximity more and more often.

* * *

When he brought his favorite human her food he found her scribbling intently in one of the journal he’d procured at her request. On previous occasions when he’d found her similarly engaged he’d returned later to find her food cold and un-eaten. “You should eat,” he told her.

Surprised, she glanced up from what she was doing. “I thought you could only speak when you had a message from God to pass on,” she said. 

The angel thought on that for several minutes. “It is my duty to care for you,” he said finally. “If you don’t eat the food I bring you I will have failed in my duty.”

She smiled. “I’m troublesome am I?” 

“No more than most humans,” he replied. 

“Why thank you. Most of my neighbors contend that I am terribly difficult. What with my wild imagination and strange dreams that I insist upon talking about.”

“All humans are terribly difficult,” he said. “Eat your food.”

She laughed and popped a bite in her mouth. “I’m eating, I’m eating.” 

He stayed... because she might forget to continue eating if he left, so this was within his duties.

While he watched her eat one of the other humans knocked at her door.

“Eve, it’s almost time for the Giving of Thanks,” the other human said. 

The angel started, he couldn’t believe that the Giving of Thanks had escaped his mind. He quickly overtook Eve and the other human and made it to the grove at the center of the settlement ahead of them to take up his place among the angels. 

The angels spread their wings and took to the air, hovering aloft above the clearing in great ranks. The humans gathered below. The human’s leader stepped forward. “We give thanks to God for taking us in.” he stated and all the other humans repeated his words. “We give thanks to God for sheltering us from the Void. We give thanks to God for form and sustenance. For the ground beneath our feet and the air above our eyes, for feet to stand on the ground and for eyes to see the sky above. God is the creator of all we see, and we give thanks for all that we have.”

When the human’s litany was finished the angels’ voices rose in a powerful chorus that repeated and transformed the humans’ words, giving them the power and range to echo past the limits of Assiah and to be heard in Gehenna by the One whom they were meant for.

* * *

“Have you come to tell me to eat once again?” Eve asked, looking up from her notes, as he arrived with her food many cycles later. 

“How did you know that I am me?” he asked. 

“You are the only one who tells me to eat,” Eve replied.

“But I hadn’t said anything yet,” the angel protested. “How could you know that I was me and not another? We are all the same.” 

“Obviously you’re not,” Eve disagreed. “None of the others tell me to eat.”

There was nothing the angel could say to refute that, so he said nothing.

“Will you come again?” Eve asked.

“Yes,” he decided. “You need to be told to eat and none of the others see that. Since I am the one that sees the need it must be my duty to fill it.” 

“If we are to be regular acquaintances we should know one another’s names,” Eve said.

“I know your name,” the angel replied. “The other humans call you Eve.”

“But I don’t know yours,” Eve protested. 

“I am an angel, we have no need of names. We are the hands and feet, the voice and the ears of the Presence, that is all.”

“That is not all that you are,” Eve disagreed with a fierce scowl.

* * *

“What is it you write in your books?” the angel asked the next time he came.

Eve opened her journal and turned it so that he could see. Scattered between fragments of sentences were pictures. Sketches of faces that the angel had never seen among the humans and of spires reaching to a sky with no arch of Gehenna over it. There were pages where Eve had scribbled over the paper until it was almost all black, but within the blackness were darker currents and pinpoints of light.

“What is it?” the angel asked, staring at the blackened page with fascination. 

“The Void, I think,” Eve replied. “I dream about it. I dream about people who aren’t here and a place that was lost. We were lost in the void and God took us in and gave us form and shelter,” she repeated the words from one of the human leader’s praises. Then she continued. “I think there are others like us who are still lost in the Void.”

“What is the Void like?” the angel asked. 

Eve shivered. “There are only glimpses of it in my dreams. It’s the absence of everything. It’s hungry.” She thought for a moment. “Do you know what a concentration gradient is?”

The angel looked puzzled. 

Eve drew a glass of pure water, then she took a sugar cube and dropped it in the glass. “There is a lot of sugar in the cube, but none in the water.” They sat shoulder to shoulder and silently watched the sugar cube dissolve into the water. “Now the sugar is evenly distributed through the water. When something is concentrated in one place, nature is inclined to spread it out. The Void is nothingness, so it only makes sense that it would be driven to evenly distribute anything within it rather than leaving it whole. The Void is hungry to fill it’s nothingness with the something that is us and in the process it would tear us to atoms and scatter us across the whole of itself.”

The angel nodded that he understood.

“There are others like me out in the Void, slowly being torn apart, like we were before God found us and brought us here,” Eve said. “The others say I should be grateful that I was saved, but that knowledge haunts me.” 

“I’m sorry,” the angel said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Eve smiled. “That you care helps.”

* * *

“I’m going to call you Satan,” Eve informed the angel. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. You are more than another angel, you are as much an individual as I am. You should have a name of your own to set you apart from the others.”

The angel felt a strange warmth in his chest. “Satan, I like it.” he decided.

Eve smiled. “Take me into the world. I want to see what is beyond the settlement.”

“You’ll go even if I say no?” the angel asked, without waiting for her to answer he continued. “Then I suppose I must. We angels exist to care for foolish humans. If you wish to remove yourself from a safe place, I can only follow and keep you from harm.”

“You’ve become clever about how you interpret your duties,” Eve remarked. “Let’s go then. We should pack food. I think we’ll be gone for a long time.”

They gathered their supplies superstitiously working under the theory that no one would tell them they couldn’t if no one knew what they were planning. They left the next day, hours before dawn. Eve’s eyes couldn’t penetrate the darkness, so she trustingly put her hand in Satan’s and let him lead the way. By the time dawn broke they had traveled out of sight of the settlement far beyond where either of them had ever ventured before.

They eventually found a stream and followed it for days. It led them to high mountains where they found soft yellow rocks in the stream beds. “I remember this,” Eve said turning one of the rocks over in her hands. “It can be drawn into wires and used to conduct electricity.”

Satan frowned at the strange term.

Eve’s brow crinkled as she tried to think of a way to explain. “Just before God stopped coming among us there would be fire in the skies when he entered Assiah. Certain metals, like this one, can be used to channel and tame God-Fire.” She collected samples of the yellow rocks and noted the location where she’d found them on the map she was crafting to record their journey.

From the mountain’s highest reaches they surveyed the world around them. Behind them the settlement is a darker blur in green plains. Before them, past the mountains, there is was shimmering silver in the distance. “What is that?” Satan asked. 

“Let’s find out,” Eve answered.

The food they brought with them ran out ten days after they entered the mountains. “Is this editable?” Eve asked examining a fruit bearing bush with a small frown. Satan nodded. “How did I know that? That I recognize minerals doesn’t surprise me, but how do I remember the plants in this world? This alien world where we are refugees from the Void.”

“This world was made for you,” Satan replied. “The Presence created a hollow within his body for you to take shelter in, perhaps he created it’s form from your memories of the world you knew before.”

“It’s quiet here,” Eve disagreed. “There was very little quiet on the world I glimpse in my dreams. Long ago possibly, but I don’t think, I don’t believe we, the survivors, would have ever known quiet. The world I remember was too full by then.”

“Mayhap memories are more than we realize.”

* * *

Six weeks into the mountains Satan was watching Eve eat her meal when he suddenly become aware of another human behind them. As he’d known how to fly and to grow the plants humans required to fuel their bodies Satan knew the human was alone and injured. He knew he was the closest angel and should fly instantly to the human’s aid. Satan looked at Eve and resisted the pull. His human was right in front of him, who knew what might befall her if he left her side. The other human could fend for itself until a less busy angel could go after it.

When Eve finished her food they packed up and continued on. Satan’s awareness of the other human wa like an oppressive weight on his brain. He stared at Eve, picturing her tumbling off the narrow mountain path or caught in a rock slide. He’d followed her to keep her safe. Humans managed to endanger themselves within the sheltered confines of the settlement. There was no telling what might happen to them out in the world. Satan grimaced as that line of thought brought him back to the other human. He was here for Eve and only Eve.

“Is something wrong?” Eve asked putting her hand on his arm and staring up at him with worried turquoise eyes. 

“I’m being compelled to leave you,” Satan replied. “Some other foolish human has harmed himself. But I won’t go! I won’t!”

“They’re hurt?” Eve’s eyes widened.

“You could be hurt!”

“I’ll sit right here,” Eve replied hopping up on a large rock beside their path. “Leave the supplies with me and fly to them as quickly as you can. Hurry and help them.” She smiled. “Then return to me all the sooner.”

Satan nodded. He secured their things behind the rock where Eve sat. Then he leapt into the sky, his massive wings spread wide. Powerful down-strokes bore him onward. The valleys and ridges he and Eve had spent days exploring flashed by below him. It wasn’t long before Satan was landing beside the strayed human. 

The man was blonde with smoke grey eyes. He was shivering with cold and shock, his leg was bent at an unnatural angle. He’d slipped on a rock while wading across a stream. Impatiently, Satan pulled the bones back into alignment then bathed the wound in the Presence’s energy which he’d kept stored within his body. After a bit the man was healed, he stood cautiously, testing the newly healed leg. the man was tall for a human but still nearly a head shorter than Satan. “You’re the odd one, the angel that’s always following Eve around,” the man said accusingly.

“You don’t belong here,” Satan said. “Go back to the settlement before you’re injured again.”

“What did you do with her?” the man demanded. 

Satan glared down at him. “She wished to explore, I followed to keep her from harm. You are distracting me from that task.”

“I don’t believe you,” the man said. “Take me to her.”

Satan scowled. He needed to get back to Eve as soon as possible. This stupid human would undoubtedly follow and do injury to himself again if left untended. Then he’d have to leave Eve to fix him yet again. Angrily Satan caught the man under his arms and with several rapid strokes of his wings he struggled into the air. Flying while carrying a man was difficult and slow. Satan’s wings beat furiously as he fought to gain altitude. Finally he caught an updraft and soared high into the sky.

Looking down at the ragged terrain far below it occurred to Satan that the man would be dashed to pieces if he fell from this height. Perhaps he’d even be damaged beyond repair. All Satan had to do was let go and he’d be rid of this impediment, free to rush back to Eve’s side. The thought, so contrary to Satan’s basic purpose, shocked him. Of course there was no guarantee that the man couldn’t be fixed regardless of how badly damaged he was, none of the other humans had ever been damaged beyond an angel’s ability to repair them before. Satan sighed, it had been a nice thought, but ultimately he didn’t think it would do anything except keep him from Eve’s side even longer.

Despite Satan’s best efforts it was well past sunset when he returned to Eve with the man in tow. While he’d been gone, Eve had set up camp. She’d pulled the blankets and tarp out of the pack Satan had left with her and made a tent. A small fire burned merrily in front of the tent with a gourd of water hanging nearby to heat.

Eve waved cheerfully when she saw Satan descending. Then she noticed the man. “Adam! What were you doing so far from the settlement?” she asked.

Satan dropped Adam the last few feet to the ground then landed. “He wouldn’t go back so I had to bring him with us.” Satan stretched his wings and arms, they ached from the strain of carrying a passenger. “I was designed to fly myself to Gehenna to bring back the Presence’s energies,” he complained. “Not to lug wayward humans about.”

“After you vanished I read your journals,” Adam confessed to Eve. “And I remembered, at least a little. I’d taken apart the lights in my dwelling before, expecting… I don’t know what.”

“But there was nothing inside,” Eve said. “Nothing to make it work.”

“When I read through your journals I remembered circuits,” Adam said. He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and showed Eve the diagram he’d drawn.

Eve snatched it out of his hand. Her eyes traced over the lines eagerly. “Yes! This would have made light. Can you remember other schematics from before the Void?”

Satan frowned at the two of them until Eve smiled and clasped his arm. “Thank you,” she said.


	3. Exile

Months later the three of them stood on a stretch of sand staring out across gentle waves. “I can see the end of the world,” Eve exclaimed. 

“You can see the wall of Gehenna here,” Satan confirmed. He pointed across the sea to the point where the shimmering arch of sky touched the surface of the water. 

Adam knelt on beach and scooped up a handful of sand. He held it up and let it trickle through his fingers. “I can make glass insulators from this,” he said to Eve. “We’ll need insulators as well as wires if we’re going to make any of those circuits I remembered.”

Eve crouched beside Adam and examined the sand as well. “We can start by making the light you remembered,” she said. “It may help us remember others. What we need is a transmitter.”

Seeing the two humans becoming caught up in their incomprehensible obsession with pre-Void technologies Satan’s wings twitched with irritation. He turned away from them haughtily.

“Even if we manage to build one, we’d still have no way of powering it,” Adam said with a sigh.

Eve glanced at Satan, “I’m sure, between the three of us, we can figure something out.” At her inclusion of him, Satan turned back to the other two.

They remained on the beach for many days. Adam and Even sketched their schematics into the sand over and over again. They drew everything they could remember, no matter how fragmented the memory, in hopes that it might spark something for the other. Satan searched the sea for fish to sustain them. And he wondered how it was that he could find such contentment in taking care of Eve while taking care of a second human was nothing but a chore.

“We’ll have to return soon,” Eve remarked one night as the moon rose over the gentle waves of the sea. “We’ve explored to the end of the world and learned, remembered so much. It’s been a blessing to be away from everyone who calls me a crazy, ungrateful troublemaker, to be able to think without constantly being told I’m not meant to think, but there are things in the settlement that will help us. They may only be hollow echoes of the things we remembered from before the Void but we can still use them .”

“Every day we’re reclaiming more memories,” Adam argued. “Why go back now?”

“We’ve recovered enough to start trying to build a transmitter,” Eve said.

“It might take longer here, if we make everything from scratch but we’re closer to most of the raw materials we’ll need and no one will see to disapprove,” Adam countered. “Why do we need to hurry? It’s good, being out here, just the two of us, isn’t it?”

“Three of us,” Eve corrected.

“She worries for the ones of your kind who may still be in the Void,” Satan said with a feeling of smug superiority that he knew Eve’s mind better than Adam.

Eve nodded. She put a hand on Satan’s forearm, glad for his support. “This isn’t another hobby for idling away the days. I am certain that there are others out in the Void still suffering as we once suffered. We must reach out to them, let them know that there is shelter, salvation, to be had.”

For a moment Adam looked doubtful, then he sighed. “Alright, if that’s what you believe.”

* * *

The last night of their return journey they camped on a hillside within sight of the settlement’s lights. Satan woke Eve before the dawn broke, quietly he led her away from the campsite, where they could talk without waking Adam. 

“When I was created, I was told that humans were precious and that I had been made to tend them,” Satan said. “For myself I have decided that YOU are precious. Whatever you need, I swear to provide.”

“I know,” Eve replied. “I think I’ve known ever since you first told me to eat my food. I don’t think I would have dared undertake this quest for knowledge if I hadn’t known that you’d support me.”

Satan stepped closer to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. His wings spread slightly, sweeping forward to cut the two of them off from the rest of the world. “It won’t change when we return to the others. I may have to tend the other humans as well but you will always be first for me. I want to see you happy.”

“I know I worry over things everyone else tells me I should forget,” Eve said. “But you do make me happy. That you humor my strange obsessions, that you support me when everyone else calls me mad. I am so very glad that you found me.”

* * *

They returned to the settlement the next day. Eve and Adam repurposed the remembered amenities into crude processing tools and quizzed the others on their hobbies, often unacknowledged remnant memories of before the Void. Satan flew back and forth across Assiah collecting the raw materials for their experiments. Despite the sense of urgency Eve conveyed to the other two there were still many, many false starts, failed prototypes and delays.

Adam was careful to observe all the settlement’s customs and to present their activities as harmless amusements of no particular import. Eve’s drive was too consuming for her to bother with maintaining appearances. She withdrew from the settlement and took to sleeping in a lean-to near the forge the three of them had constructed. She quit attending the Giving of Thanks. When her hair got in the way of her work she cropped it short Soot from the forge sank into the creases of her skin and the beds of her nails. The smell of ash clung to her. Adam’s best efforts could only convince the community to leave her to her madness. 

Among the angels Satan’s indulgence, his participation in his humans’ preoccupation was frowned upon. And not only was Satan’s aiding Eve’s activities disapproved of, more fundamentally the simple fact that Satan clearly favored one human above all others was disquieting to the other angels. But they’d always been moved by an inborn knowledge of their human charges’ needs. They had never needed to police each-other and so they contented themselves with watching Satan and disapproving. And secretly, some of them began to discover that they also had particular humans that they favored.

“I need your help for the next stage,” Eve declared one day, grasping Satan’s arm and pulling him along with her. “Just before God sent us angels there was blue fire crackling in the air around Him when He walked among us,” she said. “I believe that was the manifestation of his power. The same power he lends you to restore us as our bodies wear out.” Satan let her ramble without interruption. As she’d become increasingly consumed by her quest he and Adam both found it easiest to simply go along. To offer suggestions and help when she paused for breath and always to provide an ear to listen to the thoughts that possessed her with ever increasing fervor. “That’s what we’ll use to fuel the transmitter. We’ll adapt it somehow, but I need you to concentrate the power in you so that it manifests.”

Satan did as she asked. He forced the Presence’s power to burst from his fingertips like tiny bolts of lightning until his strength was expended. Then he flew to Gehenna to recharge himself and returned to do it all over again until Adam and Eve figured out a way to make their device run off of God-Fire. And then after several more revisions the device was complete and ready for deployment. 

The final device wasn’t large, it fit neatly in the bag Eve had made to hang on his back. His wings obscured it from casual observation. Satan still felt intensely nervous as he flew toward Gehenna with it. He was hiding things from the Presence, because eliminating the causes of Eve’s unhappiness took precedence over everything. There was a thrill to it as well, he had decided what was important to him and he was acting on that decision 

Along with the other angels, Satan flew until he reached the top of the sky and the entrance to Gehenna. Once they arrived he hung back, letting the others precede him as they headed further into Gehenna to bask in the Presence’s nearness and recharge their powers. And when the others were well ahead of him, Satan turned down a different passage. He skulked down endless, featureless white halls, into areas of Gehennan that he’d never been before. 

Eve had told him that the device needed God-Fire to function and that it would work best if he could get it close to the Void. Satan knew that Gehenna sheltered Assiah from the void, so he put Assiah at his back and forged onward. When he reached a dead end he got Eve’s device out of the backpack and cradled it to his chest. Then he took a deep breath, put his free hand flat against the featureless white wall and pushed. Slowly, gradually, his hand sunk into the wall. His wrist, then his elbow disappeared into the smooth surface, his colorless skin blending seamlessly with the material of the wall. Satan closed his eyes, exhaled and stepped forward. 

There was a feel of resistance as the device was caught between the wall and his chest, and then he was through. Beyond the wall there was no up or down, no end and no beginning. He felt like a single drop of water trying to retain cohesion in the middle of an ocean. He clutched the device to himself like a lifeline. He was subsumed in torrent of sameness, lost in a fog and one with the fog. He breathed in and couldn’t tell if it were air or his own flesh that was drawn into his lungs or even if his lungs still existed. Eve’s device was the only thing he could sense that was different. “I am Eve’s angel, Satan. I am myself, I am individual.” The device reminded him of his purpose, a purpose that was not shared by what surrounded him. 

Like a lightning bolt, Satan realized that this was truly Gehenna. He had always thought that the world of endless white halls which existed at the top of the sky was Gehenna but now he knew it was only a segment of Assiah inaccessible to humans. This world of endless, undifferentiated sameness, this was Gehenna. 

Gradually Satan’s senses adjusted to the environment beyond the walls and he discovered that Gehenna was not as featureless as it appeared on first exposure. There were flashes of God-Fire running through the murky sameness and he could feel the faint eddies where Gehenna met Assiah and was reflected back, likes waves returning to the sea. And if that was Assiah… Once again he oriented himself and slogged on, completely focused on his goal, fearful that he would dissolve into his surroundings if he allowed his concentration to falter even for a moment. 

As he continued outward from Assiah, the concentration of Gehenna thinned around him. He began to make out larger rivers of God-Fire flowing through gelatinous expanse and turned toward them. Continuing on, ever onward, he finally came up against a membrane. The gradually diluting substance of Gehenna abruptly turned impenetrably dense. There was the slightest give to it as he pressed up against it, but some instinct in Satan feared the consequences of forcing his way into the membrane as he’d forced himself into the walls separating Assiah and Gehenna. 

He traveled along the perimeter of the membrane until he found a river of God-Fire that flowed near it. Then he set out the device, unreeling a wire and lowering lowering it into the God-Fire. The raging current of blue fire raced up the wire and for several long moments Satan was engulfed in it. It flowed over him and through him until finally he was able to tear himself free. For a time he huddled just beyond the reach of the God-Fire shaking and shivering. Then he recalled his purpose and returned to the device. He flipped a few switches and adjusted the knob until the gauge read correctly, from everything Eve had taught him it appeared to be functioning. 

As he approached the walls the tide that had initially provided him with direction became an obstacle, but the image of returning triumphant to Eve carried him through the return trip. He struggled against the current, willing himself onward until it was done and he was tearing himself back out of the wall, reassembling the minute bit of Gehenna that had been him back into his body as he passed through the barrier and returned to the maze of white halls above Assiah proper. Satan lay crumpled in the hall for a long time. Then cautiously, fearful of what he might discover, he looked down to see if his body was whole. He flexed fingers, toes and wings to see if he still functioned. After a while longer he lurched to his feet, afraid to lean on the walls for support. He didn’t feel right or particularly well put together after merging with Gehenna and dragging himself back out. However, by the time he caught up with the other angels Satan had recovered enough to disguise the lingering unsteadiness that he felt. Along with the rest he stepped into the sky and spread his wings. 

After few moments, once he was sure he was still sound, he drew his wings closer to his body, allowing himself to fall faster. He was eager to tell Eve about his success. He touched down lightly near the forge. Eve came running, Adam followed more sedately. “You’re back safe!” Eve exclaimed. Then a puzzled frown creased her brow. “Your eyes are blue,” she added even as Satan announced, “I did it! I found God-Fire near the outer boundary, as close to the Void as I could get and I set up the device there exactly as you described.” 

“That’s wonderful! Eve exclaimed, impulsively hugging Satan for a moment before stepping back to include Adam. “Now we just have to wait for the others to hear our signal and come.”

“What if God doesn’t take them in?” Adam worried.

Satan shook his head. “The Presence took you in, rearranged the internal structure of Gehenna solely to to create a shelter for you. The Presence created us to tend to your needs. The Presence loves you. He won’t leave your kin to perish in the Void.”

“If God truly cared, He would have sought us out Himself,” Adam argued. “We stumbled on Him and He took pity on us but, Satan, you yourself have told us that He isn’t looking for other survivors.”

“The cosmos is vast,” Eve said, with the certainty that her memory of the Void and Before was clearer than anyone else’s. “There’s a difference knowing someone is dying somewhere out in all that vastness and watching it happen right in front of you. We’ve done what we can. Now we have to have faith in God’s benevolence.” She turned back to Satan, “But why- how did your eyes turn blue?”

* * *

And then they waited. Waited for the message they’d sent out to be heard. Waited to be discovered. Satan soon realized that he couldn’t sense the Presence’s will any longer. He remembered the tasks he’d routinely undertaken, but the innate sense of what needed doing at any time was gone. When the other angels raised their voices in praise, Satan knew his voice no longer carried to Gehenna, it had no more power or range than a human’s. And his eyes were blue, the vivid blue of the God-Fire he’d been submerged in. He couldn’t return to Gehenna, couldn’t stand before the Presence with evidence of his disobedience splashed across his face. But he no longer seemed to need to go before the Presence, since his return from Gehenna the power within him refreshed itself.

And time continued to pass and still there was no answer to the signal they’d sent. Adam began speculating that they were too late, that the others had all perished in the Void, that maybe they had always been the only survivors, that the others had perished before God found them. Eve refused to give up hope. She reminded them of the vastness of the Void and insisted that they just needed to give the others more time to hear and respond.

Then came a morning like none other. As one the angels, excluding Satan took to the air. The Host spoke in a single voice. “Come forth, stand before me!” The humans rushed from their dwellings to gather in the square. They, along with Satan, stared up at the Host fearfully. Together the Host spoke, “I took you in, shared myself with you. And in return you have abused my hospitality. You have gone behind my back and summoned a multitude of others to take what I had chosen to give you. Why didn’t you ask?” there was an odd note of hurt in the multi-throated voice at that question.

“I do not have the resources to shelter all of you! But I cannot leave them to perish.” A light washed over the settlement and the humans fell writhing in pain as they were changed. “No longer will I share my power to restore your physical forms. In time the energies that sustains your form will falter and you will be forced back into the Void. In the meantime YOU will create new receptacles for those you have called. They will be born with a finite amount of energy. For a finite time after birth humanity will be allowed to shelter within me and be made strong to survive the Void, but when your time ends you will be sent back to the Void to make room for others.”

“I had meant to heal you, to restore you to full strength, but instead you chose bare survival. You will suffer the Void, over and over again you will be subjected to it’s rigors. Stripped of memory, of past, all that you accumulate in each life-time will be lost. Only your essences will continue on. But always remember: It was your actions that brought this fate upon you.”

“No! I won’t go back!” A man in the crowd shouted. He pointed to Eve. “It wasn’t MY choice, it was HERS. She chose for all of us!” He turned to the rest of the crowd in appeal. “We’ve all heard her going on about her nightmares, we know it’s her that brought this upon us!”

Slowly the crowd drew back until Adam and Eve stood apart from the rest. A stone sailed through the air, it struck Eve’s shoulder leaving a long gash. There were a moment of frozen silence as everyone stared at the blood running down Eve’s arm. The angels looked from Eve to the stone-thrower with bewilderment and shock, their lack of unity showed that the Presence had lost focus and released the angels at the sudden explosion of violence. 

The humans stared as well, startled by the violence but not uncomprehending of it like the angels were. They glanced from the blood to each other, drawing conviction from their numbers. An ugly muttering began to rise from the mob, a second person reached for a stone.

Satan gaped at his most precious human as her blood drip from her fingers and fell to the ground, at Eve’s features marred by pain. A second stone flew through the air. Blue flames erupted from Satan, he grabbed the stone out of the air and hurled it back at the human who’d thrown it. The flaming missile tore through the man’s chest and smashed into the person behind him, spreading blue flames.

The humans screamed and scattered in a panic as the flames continued to spread, reaching hungrily for the humans who’d dared turn on Eve. Satan flew after the fleeing humans, his wings propelling him forward, unsatisfied by simply sending flames after them. Adam grabbed Eve’s hand and pulled her from the settlement under the cover of the growing chaos. 

As Satan torn into the crowd the angels finally shook off their immobilizing shock and tried to restrain him. At first the other angels’ efforts were tentative, calling to him to stop, stepping between him and the humans but, with the memory of Eve’s blood searing his brain, Satan wouldn’t be dissuaded. Long after Adam and Eve had made good their escape from the settlement Satan continued to fight. His wings, powered by massive flight muscles, became fearsome weapons, battering the angels who dared to keep him from the targets of his rage. The other angels could contain him, the blue flames left them unaffected, but they couldn’t control him. Repeatedly they tried to lift him into the air, to return him to Gehenna, but only so many could hold him while in flight. Over and over again he broke free, brutally breaking bones and laying open flesh in the process, only to be pinned to the ground again moments later. As their wounds mounted the other angels became increasingly savage in return. 

The leading edge of one of Satan’s wings caught another angel in the throat, crushing cartilage. The angel collapsed, convulsing, gasping for air. Satan felt a multitude of hands grasp his wings. And they pulled. Pulled until the joints popped out of the sockets. Satan screamed in agony. They kept pulling, until the skin and muscles tore. A sense of detached unreality descended on Satan as he watch them drop first one wing and then the other to the ground as if they were so much dead meat. He wasn’t sure if he were still screaming or not. He could only hang limply between two other angels as they flew him back to Gehenna and dropped him in the entrance. 

Satan crashed to his knees and elbows as soon as he was released. He watched his blood spread across the pure white floor, the first color to stain Gehenna. The blue flames that were still enveloping him followed the blood, burning it into the floor for all time to come. Slowly Satan became aware of a pitiful animal-whining and eventually realized the sound was coming from his own mouth. 

Then the Presence’s aura enveloped Satan and mutilated flesh of his back knit itself together. The blood pool surrounding him stopped spreading. The pain receded and finally the blue flames burned themselves out. For a moment Satan basked in the Presence’s soothing aura, in the absence of pain. Then one of the healed remnants of his flight muscles twitched. Without the weight of his wings to support the muscles across his back contracted erratically, determinedly striving to balance a mass that no long existed.

Satan shoved himself along the floor until he smashed up against a wall. He cowered there, his teeth bared at the Presence. His clawed hands scrabbled against the polished floor. For a moment Satan was distracted by his hands, the unfamiliar corded muscles and sharp tipped claws at the ends of his arms.

The Presence made no move to approach him but Satan felt the Presence’s curious scrutiny. “You should be destroyed,” the Presence told him after a long time. “You are clearly defective, diseased. But in your defectiveness you seem like a separate, sentient being, not the rogue cell of my body that I know you to be. I won’t destroy you, but you will be quarantined, that your disease will not spread.”

A wave of blue flames swept over the chamber. It consumed the other angels in the chamber who had brought Satan there in an instant. The power of the flames dwarfed the flames Satan had produced out of his desperation. His flames were a firecracker compared to an atomic bomb. As the flames approached him, Satan fled. He was driven deep into the maze of cold, white halls. Then the flames vanished as abruptly as they’d come and Satan was left utterly alone.


	4. Return

As time passed Satan explored the limits of his prison. Gradually he grew accustom to the loss of his wings. The twitching of his, now useless, flight muscles never really ceased, but it lessened. After a time his posture and gait shifted, his subconscious stopped expect the presence of his wings and the constant feeling of being off-balance ceased. 

Satan had no need for sustenance. There was nothing within his prison that could cause him harm. But after Assiah the lack of stimulation was torturous. There was simply nothing except empty white walls, ceilings and floors within his reach. When he tried pressing past the walls to enter Gehenna-proper, their substance no longer accepted him. And no matter how he searched he couldn’t find a way back to the portal into Assiah’s sky. So in the empty halls he remained. There was no sound but the echoes of his own footsteps or of his raised voice. There was no Eve. For well-over half his existence she had been his purpose, the center of all that he did, without her it felt like there was no reason for him to exist. 

For the lack of anything better to do, he spent a long time examining his own body. How it had changed, been forged into something new in the heat of the blue flames he’d stolen from the depths of Gehenna. Angels were uniformly, perfectly beautiful: Of a single height and build, their faces all identically pleasing; perfectly portioned and perfectly bland in their repetition. Now Satan found his body had become leaner, the muscles more starkly defined. His fingers terminated in razor-like claws where he hadn’t even possessed the flimsy nails that graced human hands before. Everything about him had become sharp and angular: pointed ears, jagged teeth, a narrow nose and short horns rising from his temples making his skull even more starkly triangular instead of the oval that was standard for angels. Following the loss of his wings he’d grown a tail. Satan hypothesized that it had grown in response to the amputation. The tail aided his balance, gave him back a measure of control over his center of gravity which he’d always unconsciously adjusted by moving his wings.

After exhausting his interest in his changed body and having mapped out every inch of the massive maze that was his prison, driven nearly mad by boredom, he tried to break out, clawing, beating and screaming at the walls until his hands and feet were broken.

He woke up healed and in a different place. Instead of the endless white walls he saw blackness through a translucent wall before him and the rivers of God-Fire cutting through the fog of outer Gehenna behind him. The Void was something new, something different from the white halls that had been his world for so long. Satan stared out into the darkness. Eventually he noticed millions of tiny colored wisps flittering about, huddling close to the mass of Gehenna’s outer membrane as if it’s nearness provided some shelter from the Void. The human souls they’d summoned, Satan realized.

Satan wondered how much time had passed. Was Eve still on Assiah or had she died and become one of those flitting wisps? He stared out the window endlessly, trying to count all of them, trying to determine if Eve were among them.

“There are fourteen billion of them,” the Presence said suddenly. “And more are still coming.”

Satan jumped and cringed away from the Presence. 

“You’ve become something unintended,” the Presence told him, maintaining a distance. “You can’t be allowed to run amuck until I understand what you are.”

Satan understood it as a poor apology for locking him away from Assiah and possibly for not repairing his wings.

For a long time they observed the human souls in the void.

“There must be others like me,” the Presence stated. “I have never encountered one, but I am sure of it. I must have come from somewhere. Left to their own devices the human population would be more scattered, they would have found others to aid them. But you called them all here. All you could reach. If I had the resources I could create bodies for them until there were so many that they couldn’t take a single step without bumping into each other and still only a fraction of them would fit within Assiah. I am doing all I can. I am reordering myself. When it is done I will destroy the current Assiah and replace it with something larger. I’ve given them the means to create forms to populate Assiah. They will have survive but they will suffer hardship as I stretch myself thinner.” 

“What do I care?” Satan replied.

“You went to so much effort to save them.”

“For her, always for her. What good is saving them if it means being separated from her?” Satan demanded.

Then the Presence was gone and Satan was alone again.

After that the Presence would appear from time to time and they would talk.

Gradually Satan discovered that that he had been granted access to more and more of Gehenna. Eventually he started seeing angels going about their business again. When they saw him they quickly hurried away. They backed away, never taking their eyes off him as if he were a horrifically dangerous beast. In time he located the portal to Assiah, for all the good it did him without wings, but it provided a window on the world.

“Perhaps I was too late to prevent the spread of your infection,” the Presence said, observing the angel’s reaction to Satan. “Or perhaps none of you were what I believed you to be when I made you. If they were merely the cells of my body they wouldn’t fear you.”

“Long ago one of them speculated that you made the humans to give us something to care for,” Satan replied.

“If it were an infection, it has been spreading among you for some time. Or perhaps you, all of you, have been aware of yourselves as individuals since the beginning,” the Presence said, acknowledging the proof of his mistake. “The humans are terribly weak when they first come from the Void. Caring for them is complex, you had to be made complex to perform your function.”

Satan looked disinterested. He didn’t particularly care that it was an accident that he and the other angels were sentient, not simple automatons. He had always known what he was, how he came about didn’t matter to him. It had happened, that was the end of it.

“The humans’ new method of creating physical forms is an improvement,” the Presence continued. “The first ones took centuries to even begin recovering from the Void. The bodies they make for themselves come into Assiah incomplete but the process of growing their bodies to adulthood with their souls in place integrates them more thoroughly with the energies of Assiah. They gain resilience much faster. I can shorten their rotation on Assiah, it will will allow them all to survive.”

“Is my Eve out there, suffering the Void already, as punishment for wanting to save them? Satan demanded. 

“It’s not a punishment,” the Presence stated. “It is the cost they must bear that I may save them. I had believed I would be forced to allow some of them to perish in the Void, but if their rotation on Assiah may be shortened then all their lives may yet be preserved.”

“Is she out there?!” Satan shouted.

“The first humans to find refuge in me had progressed greatly in their recovery. It is likely that they will always be somewhat different than those whom you called to me. Their energy has not yet waned. Unless an accident has befallen her she remains in Assiah.”

* * *

Knowing Eve still lived didn’t make Satan any less resentful of his captivity. Conversation kept the boredom manageable, at least it kept the urge to beat himself bloody against the walls at bay, but he wasn’t grateful. He wandered the halls sullenly, scaring the angels from time to time. 

There was no measure of time in white halls, no changes to observe and give its passage meaning. Still Satan assumed that it had been a long, directionless, time that he’d been trapped there. Then he felt an overpowering pull: Eve hurt. She was shocked and confused and hurt past bearing and he had to go, he’d promised her. 

The drive to go to her bypassed all reason. There was no conscious decision, he was simply running for the portal. His lack of wings didn’t register until well after he’d thrown himself into the sky. For a moment as he fell, blue flames erupted from the scars on his back forming empyreal ghosts of his lost wings but he didn’t have the strength to make them solid enough to support him. 

He closed his eyes and turned his head away, expecting to shatter to pieces when his body struck the ground. He’d failed, his promise to Eve would be broken, he’d done everything he could to go to her and it wasn’t enough. But when he hit, the ground absorbed him as the walls of Gehenna refused to. It wasn’t the same, matter in Assiah had been differentiated into many things, but all of Assiah had once been Gehenna before it was given form and it accepted him back.

And he was back, he’d made it back to Assiah. Satan quickly learned that he couldn’t reform his body from the ground as he had from Gehenna. Gehenna was fluid, an undifferentiated continuum. In Assiah water had been parted from water, matter had been given names and shapes and it couldn’t be willed into something new, not by him. 

Eve’s shock faded into anger, but the pain remained. Satan had returned to Assiah but still didn’t have the means to go to her. But he was closer, he searched relentlessly. Then he sensed another, also filled with frustrated worry for Eve, also unable to find the means to reach out to her and comfort her. The similarity drew them together. Feeling the slight pull, the something new introduced into his environment, Satan rushed forward. He forced himself into this new possibility with the finesse of a freight train. 

Satan opened eyes and stared down at slim, long-fingered hands that terminated in flimsy, human nails. He stood, his balance slightly off due to the lack of a tail, but the body he found himself in had it’s own reflexes and he quickly adjusted. Finally he had the means to go to Eve.

He found himself in a rude camp. From the pull he sensed, his new body had already been going after Eve before he took it. Without bothering to pack up the camp Satan set out after Eve. He walked through the day. Aches developed in his feet and legs. A different sort of ache filled his belly. Ages of tending to humans informed him that he should stop to rest and eat, but he’d left all the supplies his body had thought to bring behind and his promise to Eve drove him onward. 

As the sun began to set that night he saw a thin column of smoke rising in the distance. A short while later he came upon another camp, less slap-dash and better supplied than the one he’d abandoned that morning. Eve crouched beside the fire, using a long stick to stir it into burning hotter. Her hair had grown long again and was streaked with white, but she moved with the same sure grace that he remembered from before age had touched her. When she saw him she stood abruptly, brandishing the stick threateningly. “I told you I never wanted to see you again! You sided with Him against our son!” she exclaimed. Then she stopped and blinked at him. “Your eyes… They’re blue, not grey” she trailed off, the stick wavered. “Satan?”

“I told you I’d always be there for you. Whatever you need.”

“I need to be away from there,” Eve said vehemently. “I need to be away from reminders, away from all of them, from everyone you whispered and whispered that there must have been something wrong with my son all along that his offering was rejected.” Tears welled up in Eve’s eyes.

“Don’t cry!” Satan said desperately. “Tell me what I can do to make it better.”

“There’s nothing that can be done, it’s beyond any fixing. Able is dead and Cain is a murderer. My first two babies are both utterly lost. None of this would have happened if He hadn’t played favorites!” Eve exploded. “There are no amends, no turning back time. Not for any of us.” She sighed. The only thing that can be done now is to move on, to start over.”

“We can do that,” Satan said. He couldn’t imagine anything better than being the chance to take her away.

* * *

Many cycles later Satan woke to the sound of hushed conversation outside of the isolated home he and Eve had made for themselves. He reached over and shook her awake. “There’s a crowd outside.”

Eve frowned. “I grew tired of running while you were gone. Let’s see what they want.”

They dressed and stepped outside. And stared, bewildered, at the dozens of pairs gathered before their home. Precisely half of the crowd were identical. Clearly angels despite the lack of wings. Each one stood with a human partner. 

One of the wingless angels moved to the fore of the crowd. “Satan, we wish to follow you,” he said. “The Presence is calling us back to Gehenna and those who go do not return. We have decided to ignore the Presence’s call. Like you, we have found a human who’s hold on us is stronger still.”

“So do as you please,” Satan said turning to go back inside. 

“We cut off our wings,” the speaker continued. “As yours were torn from you. We’ve severed our connection to Gehenna. Even if we should experience a moment of weakness and wish to answer the call we all still hear; day in and day out we hear the Presence calling us away; but we no longer have the option of answering. We’ve passed the point of no return, please don’t turn us away. Teach us how to live as you do.... I’m Paimon, this is Jubal, my soulmate.”

Satan glanced at Eve and she nodded. “You may join us,” he said. Then he saw Paimon try to discreetly ignore the twitching of his severed flight muscles and remembered his own wounds after losing his wings and the strangeness of his body after their amputation. He prodded the embers of the blue fire that had settled into his bones into life.

In moments the flames had engulfed the crowd. Rather than simply healing their wounds as he’d intended, Satan felt his flames reach out for the sparks of individuality that had driven the gathered angels to rebel. The flames excite those sparks, giving them the power to manifest physically. When the flames receded the formerly identical angels had been transformed. In echo of the uniqueness of their spirits their bodies had taken on a wild variety of shapes and colors.

Eve stepped forward. For a long moment she simply looked over the assembled group, letting them look back at her. 

“In the beginning,” she said, “God created a paradise for a few badly injured human refugees that he stumbled across in the Void and created angels to serve them, to care for them as one cares for a child. We humans are not children any more, angels do not exist simple to serve our needs. We are partners, equals. Together, no longer as angel and human but as one we will create our own paradise which will outshine the one lost to us.” 

The crowd cheered. 

Eighty years later in a large home at the center of a thriving community, Eve died shortly after giving birth to her thirteenth set of twins.

“You should come see them at least,” Paimon cajoled. “They’re your children… They’re her children.”

Satan sneered, “Am I supposed to see my Eve when I look at those squalling brats? All I see is her killers.”

“You don’t mean that,” Paimon said. “I know how you feel. I felt the same when Jubal passed on. Right now, it seems like there’s nothing in the world but pain. It gets better. If you don’t let yourself love those two boys now, you’ll come to regret it.”

Satan turned and started walking off.

“She named the fair one Lucifer. His younger brother is Samael,” Paimon shouted after him. “They both have vestigial wings. The midwife thought they should be removed but I told her to wait for your decision. They’re your children.”

“Do whatever you like with them,” Satan snapped. “Drown them in the river for all I care.”

“Once you’ve held them you’ll know you don’t mean that,” Paimon insisted. “And Eve will be born again, you just have to be patient. Could you look her in the eye when she returns if you neglect the children you had with her?”

Satan turned angrily back to the other wingless angel, “You may be content to sit patiently and wait for your soulmate to be reborn. I am not. I will do whatever it takes to get her back. Those brats would simply be in my way. Don’t bother me about them again or I will drown the both of them!” 

“I can’t force you to change your mind,” Paimon sighed. “I only wish that you’d believe me when I say you’ll feel differently once your loss is not so fresh.”


	5. Family Bonds

“We aren’t so different Son.” Satan gave Yukio an approving look.

“Don’t call me that!” 

Satan continued talking over Yukio’s protest. “You understand the need to keep your beloved family close and safe. You understand that there is nothing more cruel than to be stripped of your loved ones. That’s why I’ve brought your cousin, my nephew back to you.”

“That is not Rene!” Yukio exclaimed. “That is you wearing Rene’s corpse, it's grotesques.”

“But it will be Rene,” Satan promised, unperturbed. “I brought his soul back to you as well. That was the hard part, much more difficult than reassembling his body and putting a spark of my power in it. There was next to nothing binding him to this life, if he hadn’t wanted assurance that his sacrifice had saved you he would have been out in the Void awaiting his next life before I’d realized he was dead. After all the trouble I’ve gone to bringing him back to you, being allowed to make occasional use of this body to check in on my child seems a fair enough price.”

Yukio felt a strange mixture of hope and guilt welling up underneath the terror Satan’s comment about checking in on him generated.

“Your mother isn’t in Assiah. Why would I want a material body right now?” Satan asked. “This time your mother allowed me to hold her spirit with me in Gehenna. She wasn’t ready to be done with this life yet.” He sighed, “Your mother isn’t the type to leave the world with regrets, but as my power has continued to grow it becomes harder and harder to find vessels that can hold me, even for a short time.” He gestured to Rene’s body, “Obviously her bloodline, rejuvenated by her rebirth into that bloodline can withstand my presence but with so many of you humans filling the world, the blood thins quickly. By her next incarnation, your and your brother’s descendants would be useless to me.” A whiney tone crept into Satan’s voice, “In the old days your royalty knew how to keep the door open for us, marrying their siblings or half-siblings generation after generation to so as not to dilute the the blood, but now humans object if you have children with your second cousin.”

“Yeah for modern sensibilities, slamming the door in the face of greater demons everywhere,” Yukio replied blandly. 

“I will never allow your mother’s soul to be extinguished. So long as she always comes back, the door will always open for me. But that is not enough!” Satan exclaimed. “The door opens after she’s gone, mocking me! Samael, my ever so presumptuous son, would have me accept eons of separation and tortuous sojourns in the Void for both of us in return for a few brief decades with her reincarnations. And even then years of each incarnation would be lost in finding one another again, in building anew our relationship from the pitiful scraps that will remain after her periods of internment in the Void. Samael contents himself with that, but I will not.” Satan declared. “To restore your mother to what she should be I will turn Assiah and Gehenna upside down. Tear them to pieces and build them anew.”

“I’ll oppose you,” Yukio said.

Satan shook his head, he smiled at Yukio. “You’ll help me.” 

“If you weren’t in Rene’s body I’d shoot you,” Yukio snapped

“You allowed yourself to be swayed by the True Cross’ nonsense. Because you listened to them and to the one you call your father you drove your brother to the point of suicide and were separated from him, for his protection. Because you trusted your grandfather, wicked old man that he was, you stood by and did nothing while the child you named Indigo was murdered, you killed Felix and caused the deaths of his twin and your cousin. You know this is true Yukio. And I know you, you’re my son.” He looked past Yukio to where Kit lay sleeping. “You’ve made mistakes, trusted the wrong people. But you’ve learned. You won’t stand by while your child is torn away from you. You’ll keep your cousin safe this time. Despite Samael’s interference, you’ll find a way back to your twin. I’ll help you, and you’ll help me. We will restore our family.” 

“I won’t believe a word you say!” Yukio exclaimed. “You’re Satan.”

“All I want is to look in your mother’s eyes and know she remembers me, remembers all of our past.” Satan snarled. “I’m tired of losing her. Tired of lying to her in life after life, because how can I say ‘You are the love of my life, I have waited centuries to find you again’ when she only knows whatever stories they tell of me? Why is it so wrong to strive for a world where I can be with her? Assiah and Gehenna have been transformed time and time again as the ages pass to better serve the needs of humanity. I barely recognize either any longer, but still God refuses change them so that I don’t lose her.”

“I want to have sex with her again, material body sex.” For the first time Yukio was tempted to let his aim waiver, if for no other reason than to plug his ears. But Satan continued his rant unperturbed. “I’d all but forgotten what it is like to join with her physically. If there’s one thing I have to thank your grandfather for, it’s sending your mother’s twin to talk her into returning before he sent that thrice damned Paladin after her. Sharing a womb with her was enough to reinvigorate his blood and allowed both him and his offspring to withstand my presence. For three glorious weeks I finally had a body to touch her with for the first time in eons! But then she had to go and decide that her twin’s wife and child deserved him back. Still it was good while it lasted. But why should it have to end? And what about those incarnations where her twin dies before I find her? Her parents and any other siblings are no good to me and she won’t consider sleeping with her children even if I am possessing their body.” Satan grimaced at his memories, “She was quite forceful about that the one life where I tried it.”

“I am not listening to you!” Yukio declared loudly.

Satan chuckled. “I’ve heard children don’t like thinking about their parents having sex.”

“The idea of YOU being in a relationship with anyone is revolting!”

“You think I am evil because I’m a demon, but demons were created of the evil mankind did,” Satan argued. “If you don’t believe me ask Samael how his demon blood was awakened. Ask him what humans made of him before I freed him to recreate himself as the Angel of Death. And remember: I’ve restored your cousin to you. I’ve returned one thing this corrupt world stole from you.” 

With that the blue flames in Rene’s empty eye-socket dimmed. He blinked and looked around with a lost fearful expression. Then he saw Yukio and smiled.

“Rene?” Yukio whispered.

“Yukio, is it okay I’m not dead?” Rene asked timidly and Yukio remembered that their grandfather had started torturing Rene when he’d survived the car wreck that killed his parents. “Aunt Yuri said it would be okay,” Rene continued, his voice wavering but hopeful. “She said that being alive wouldn’t hurt anymore, that you needed me back?”

“It’s okay,” Yukio said. “You and Kit will be okay, I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this story's been a bit of an experiment in world building for me. I felt like I was leaning a little too heavily on having various characters TELL how the various rules of the world came to be so I wanted to have a story set when the rules were forming. I'm not sure how successful this venture was. As hinted, Mephisto will pick-up the story of the world's beginning after going back to Rin and Co for a bit, but I think I'll continue to keep these diversions in the distant past short, relatively free of subplots and skippable.


End file.
